Environmental Cytotoxicity of Nanoparticles: Differentiating "Nanoparticulate" from "Molecular Scale" Effects

纳米材料的使用越来越多，正在推动健康和医学、能源、环境修复和其他应用的进步。这项研究试图确定纳米颗粒暴露对人类健康和环境的潜在不利影响。这些担忧正在成为使用纳米技术的非常重要的问题。这项工作解决了建立对纳米颗粒如何影响生物细胞的共同理解的挑战。几类纳米材料将在各种生物细胞和模型中进行测试，并使用特定的剂量水平和暴露时间进行测试。这项研究将区分细胞毒性后果，即仅由纳米颗粒效应引起的后果和由分子尺度效应引起的后果。它还将确定适当的指标来代表纳米颗粒效应。这项研究对于理解和使用纳米技术至关重要。

The increased use of nanomaterials is leading to advances in health and medicine, energy, environmental remediation, and other applications. This research seeks to identify the potential adverse effects of nanoparticle exposure on human health and the environment. These concerns are becoming very important issues in using nanotechnology. The work addresses the challenge of building a common understanding of how nanoparticles affect biological cells. Several classes of nanomaterials will be tested with a variety of biological cells and models and with specific dose levels and exposure times. The research will disentangle cytotoxic consequences, those originating solely from nanoparticulate effects and those originating from molecular scale effects. It will also identify appropriate metrics to represent the nanoparticulate effects. The research is critical to understanding and using nanotechnology.